The dairy restructuring push into western irrigation areas a decade ago—a move now severely testing the industry as water restrictions bite—highlights the sort of decisions that agriculture needs to address now, in order to successfully deal with climate change.
Talking at one of several special climate change update forums hosted by the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists, senior CSIRO climate change researcher Dr Mark Howden said that a first step in adapting to climate change is acknowledging the situation is real.
Dr Howden, who has been researching climate change for the past decade, made a reference to the dairy restructuring migration as a case of warnings disregarded.
“You could argue that we probably knew enough about climate change at that time to be wary of shunting all the dairy industry down to the irrigated zones, but it happened regardless,” he told a NSW Farm Writers gathering in Sydney.
“As we're seeing increasing problems with water allocation, the rationale for shifting the industry back to mostly rainfed systems I think, will become stronger over time.”
Translocating the dairy industry is an instance of “transformational change”, in which agriculture responds to climate change by moving or otherwise completely changing an industry.
Another example lies in shifting some agricultural industries into northern Australia—a proposal that may prove to be problematic, Dr Howden observed.
While rainfall in the north-west has increased over recent decades, modelling points to a drying of the region in coming decades, with a 70pc chance of reduced rainfall.
Temperature outlooks for the Northern Territory suggest that while the Top End now has one in three “heat stress” days—days in which temperatures are too hot for human or animal comfort—by 2050, every day will be a heat stress day.
Dr Howden spoke mostly on the positive outlook for adaptive responses from agriculture.
These involve changing decisions and practices within an existing industry to reflect the changing environment.
“You would expect that as climate change advances, our existing farming systems will become increasingly out of kilter with the future environment,” he said.
“Let's change that farming system—simple things like planting times, crop varieties, fertiliser regimes —to suit the future environment. What's the difference between adapting and not adapting?”
When he looked at Australia’s wheat industry under an “adapted” scenario, compared to business as usual, adaptation reversed the situation from being a net negative to an net positive.
“Across the industry, this was worth $100-$500 million on average, taken out to 2050,” Dr Howden said.
“I would suggest there is no other investment the industry can make that would have this sort of return.
"Having effective research, having knowledge, and the capacity to use them wisely will deliver huge returns into the future.”
His assessment was that the difference between having an adapated system over a non-adapted system “is worth around 17pc of baseline yield.
He said, "The catch? Most of the benefit occurs at the lower levels of climate change - that's two degrees or lower.
"Once we go above 2-2.5°C, you run out of effectiveness in adaptation.
"You have to think up a whole new suit of activities, and we haven't got those in our toolkit as of yet."
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